Posts Tagged ‘Tesla’

Electric vehicles are a joy to own but this new technology using advanced Lithium-ion battery packs requires a different type of maintenance than your traditional gasoline engine.

We countdown the top 5 maintenance steps that can be taken to extend the life of your EV battery.

5. Don’t leave your battery sit at a 100% state of charge

Most EVs have an option for a “Standard” charge or a “Range” or “Max” charge. By all means, do the maximum charge when you need it, but do it right before you start using the battery for the trip. Most EVs have charge timers to help you plan for this. If your EV doesn’t have that, do an overnight standard charge and then charge the last 10-20% in the AM before departure. Leaving a battery pack at max charge for even relatively short periods of time can possibly affect its life. As a rule of thumb, try to never let your battery sit at maximum state of charge for longer than 8 hours.

While you may be able to time your max charge and departure times well, daily charging to 100% is stressful to your battery. This is why most vendors offer “standard” or “normal” charge levels which wont help you achieve the maximum EPA range rated for your vehicle. If you don’t need the max charge, then don’t use it. Generally lithium-ion batteries do best when they operate in the 30% to 90% range for state of charge. Although a bit extreme, prolonging the time spent above or below that range theoretically may lead to a shorter pack life

Tesla Model S TIP: For overnight charging that requires a 100% MAX charge, set your “start charge time” to a time that will result in a full charge roughly 60 minutes before your departure.

4. Avoid deep discharging of the battery pack

Conversely, leaving your battery in a discharged state for an extended period may also impact its life. Most vendors protect batteries from becoming completely discharged as that can effectively “brick” the battery and leave it completely useless. The general rule of thumb is to plug in and charge whenever you can. That doesn’t mean going out of your way for a few kW of charge, but it does mean plugging your car in nightly and maintaining a reasonable charge level. What is a low state of charge? Under 30% charge is generally considered low and thus you should not let your EV sit at that low state of charge for an extended period.

Also beware that EVs consume power even when not being driven. With the Model S, it loses about 1% of its charge per day.

3. Be mindful of extreme temperature conditions

This is less applicable to the Tesla Model S which has its own built in thermal management system that pre-conditions the battery (ie. warms the pack when too cold and vice versa), but the general rule of thumb for batteries of Lithium-ion composition is to keep the battery pack between 20F – 85F.

Heat is the enemy of Lithium-ion and may increase battery degradation when consistently exposed to high temperatures. This phenomenon was enough to motivate Nissan to produce a “hot climate battery” for their LEAF after owners within hotter climates complained of battery loss.

Conversely, extreme cold weather can impact performance for a battery of lithium-ion chemistry while lowering the discharge capacity.

2. Plan ahead for extended storage

If you’re going away on vacation or for a business trip the best thing for your car is to set the charge level to 50% and leave it plugged in. If you’re leaving your EV at the airport or somewhere where you can’t leave it plugged in beware that you’re going to lose some charge per day. Charge to a level where you can get to the airport, let it sit for the trip and then still have enough charge with buffer to get home. Don’t let it sit unplugged at an airport for days on end at a 90% charge state if possible. Still, leaving it at 90% is better for the battery (and you) than leaving it at 10% and coming back to find the battery completely discharged.

1. Periodically fully charge and “balance” your battery

Lithium-ion batteries are designed to minimize the “memory” issues often found in older battery technologies, however the battery packs in EVs are more complex and often comprised of multiple individual batteries packed together into removable modules. There’s as many as 7,000 individual cells in the Model S.

Battery balancing is about maximizing your battery’s capacity and evening out the charge distribution. Modern EV battery packs include an automatic battery balancing component, but there’s steps that you can take to help the process along.

While you may never need the maximum range that your battery can provide and you may never take long trips, a periodic range or max charge is helpful to your battery’s management system. I’d suggest doing this about once every 3 months or so and keep in mind that after you fully charge you should not let it sit, that would be a violation of battery management rule #5.

Disclaimer: We’re dealing with expensive components. Read the manual for your EV, search your EV forums, develop your own rules, be consistent, but adjust as needed. The rules above are general rules for any EV that may help extend the life and health of your battery. Your own mileage (range!) may vary.

REPORTS: Tesla Chooses Nevada For Site Of Its Massive Battery Factory

Tesla Motors

CNBC is reporting Tesla has chosen Nevada as the site of its Gigafactory.

The Gigafactory is a critical piece of CEO Elon Musk’s plan to make a mass-market Tesla car, and lower the cost of carbon-neutral power. Musk has said he intends to double the world’s supply of lithium-ion batteries by 2020 and thus drive the price of the power packs downward. He’s also said he plans to build multiple Gigafactories in the future.

Tesla had already broken ground on a prospective site outside Reno earlier this summer that only bore the name “Project Tiger.” The Tahoe Reno Industrial Center currently boasts e-commerce facilities owned by Apple, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Zulily.

Tesla’s facility, which is expected to employ 6,500 workers is estimated to cost up to $5 billion. CNBC says specific terms of the deal with the state are still being worked out, and that it could be a week before they’re announced.

Apparently, the Model X won’t just match the premium-crossover competition, it will “devour” it.

The Model X won’t launch until mid-2015–and no one outside Tesla has yet driven it–but Morgan Stanley is confident the plug-in crossover will be more successful than the Model S sedan, according to The Los Angeles Times.

The financial firm’s enthusiasm is based in part on the current success of the Model S.

Analysts reason that because Tesla had more resources available to develop the Model X, it should be even better than the Model S, which has received praise from both consumers and the media alike.

How much better? Morgan Stanley predicts the Model X will outsell the Model S by 2016 and “sweep every Car of the Year award on offer by the automotive media.”

However, that assumes the Model X will cost just 5 to 10 percent more than the Model S–which starts at $69,900–and include more standard equipment. Thus far, Tesla hasn’t discussed Model X pricing at all.

Morgan Stanley also assumes that the Model X will have fewer bugs than the Model S.

This is a topic addressed in quarterly financial calls by CEO Elon Musk, who has said–in effect–that the company learned a lot from the Model S launch and that the Model X production will be able to grow more quickly due to the extra time the company has spent before launch.

Model S issues like overheating charge cords and unreliable drive units, both addressed by Tesla Motors after they came to light, haven’t notably dampened enthusiasm for the electric car.

Tesla’s ability to meet its own deadline makes for a third caveat. Morgan Stanley moderated its enthusiasm a bit by noting that the Model X has already been delayed, and registering surprise that more-extensive testing hasn’t started.

An undisguised Model X prototype was spotted testing in California back in January, while a Model S with a weight on its roof and sensors on all four wheels surfaced in March.

The firm qualified its analysis with the disclaimer that it has a financial interest in Tesla, owns some Tesla stock, and has received payment from Tesla for various services–as it has from many other carmakers.

Tesla’s Gigafactory will mark a milestone in American manufacturing – to put it in trendier language, it’s going to be a game-changer. This is already obvious to readers of the EV press, and it’s starting to sink in among the mainstream media. The investing pundits of the Motley Fool have parsed some of Tesla’s statements about the Gig, and found a couple of reasons that it may be “more revolutionary than we realize.”

First, the 30% cut in battery pack costs that Tesla is projecting is not the company’s ultimate goal, but rather the minimum that it expects to achieve in the first year of Model 3 production. According to the Fool, partner Panasonic agrees that a 30% reduction by 2017 is a conservative prediction.

Second, Tesla expects to be building battery packs for under $100 per kilowatt-hour in less than 10 years. That figure has acquired the status of a magic number – a recent ORNL studyand an article in Scientific American each cited it as the point at which EV’s will be able to compete with ICE’s on price.

In a recent conference call with stock analysts, Elon Musk said that he would be “disappointed if it took us 10 years to get to a $100/kWh pack.” A Deutsche Bank analyst chimed in that that would be low enough for Tesla’s EV’s to reach or surpass cost parity with legacy vehicles, and called Musk’s prediction “a pretty big statement.”

Musk stood by his forecast, saying that it seemed “pretty obvious.” CTO JB Straubel added that this timeline assumes that Tesla is sticking with its current battery chemistry, and doesn’t take into account any potential innovations. “To realize those cost targets, we don’t need some fundamental breakthrough in chemistry and material science. Those things are pretty well understood in front of us,” said Straubel.

Of course, optimistic predictions are a lot cheaper than $100/kWh, and it’s still possible that the Gig will cost much more, and/or take much longer to build, than expected. The Motley Fool, however, is reassured by the fact that Panasonic, which it says is “arguably more knowledgeable and experienced regarding lithium-ion production than any company in the world,” has committed to invest between $1.2 billion and $1.6 billion in the venture.

As prices drop and technologies improve, electric vehicles are now set to become a mainstay on U.S. roads and even in the U.S. military. Though adoption rates for the technology are clearly on the way up, manufacturers will still have to convince Americans that electric vehicles are cost effective, safe, and reliable.

Market research firm Navigant Research today released a survey report showing that American opinions on alternative-fuel vehicles are steadily improving. The firm found that around 67% of those surveyed now view hybrid vehicles favorably and that 61% now view plug-in electric vehicles favorably. Natural gas vehicles were also found to be viewed favorably by around 56% of those surveyed.

The survey also found that consumers looking for alternative-fuel vehicles are most concerned about saving money. Fuel efficiency was a top concern for potential buyers, followed by other factors such as performance and the size of such vehicles.

amp;lt;a href=”https://ientry.rotator.hadj1.adjuggler.net/servlet/ajrotator/1413867/0/cc?z=ientry”&amp;gt;&amp;lt;img src=”https://ientry.rotator.hadj1.adjuggler.net/servlet/ajrotator/1413867/0/vc?z=ientry&amp;amp;amp;ch=1414329&amp;amp;amp;dim=1412365&amp;amp;amp;kw=&amp;amp;amp;click=&amp;amp;amp;abr=$imginiframe” width=”615″ height=”80″ border=”0″&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;Though the industry has obviously hit a tipping point, Navigant also found that manufacturers will have to work hard to build awareness for their brands. The survey found that less than half (44%) of respondents knew of the Chevrolet Volt. Awareness for other brands was even lower, with less than 33% having knowledge of the Tesla Model S, Nissan Leaf, and BMW i3.

“Two-thirds of consumers surveyed stated that they believe EVs have unique features that stand out from their gasoline counterparts, and 6 out of 10 agreed that EVs are much less expensive to own in the long run than gasoline cars,” said Dave Hurst, principal research analyst at Navigant. “While those are encouraging numbers, it’s clear that automakers still have a long way to go in marketing these vehicles to the wider car-buying public.”

Tesla Motors Inc., the electric-car maker once written off by industry experts, is making its mark on the car market, attracting increasing attention from analysts and investors–and appears to be in for the long haul.

During an investors call on second-quarter results, company chief executive Elon Musk mentioned an auto-industry research company that predicted Tesla would turn out a maximum of 3,000 cars and was essentially doomed to fail. However, the company has delivered more than 13,000 of its Model S sedans to customers in North America so far.

For consumers, even those who cannot afford the $63,570 sticker price of the Model S, Tesla’s success means electric cars could reach the mainstream sooner than many people expected. It may happen faster if Tesla gets a little more competition.

During today’s call, Musk said he is glad BMW is getting into the electric-car market, but that there is “room for improvement” in the BMW i3.

There are several factors pointing to quicker-than-expected acceptance of electric cars in general and Teslas in particular. Among the most striking was the top score of 99 points of a possible 100 that the magazine Consumer Reports gave the Model S following a long-term road test.

Unlike glossy car-enthusiast magazines, Consumer Reports is known for unemotional, no-nonsense evaluations of vehicles that focus on practicality and ease of use as well as performance. Reviewers said they didn’t alter their scoring because the Tesla is battery powered. They also said the basic car’s range of just over 200 miles represents a sweet spot where so-called “range anxiety” fades.

Tesla’s appeal is likely to force other car makers with electric models, including BMW, Chevrolet, Honda and Nissan, to increase their vehicles’ battery range and continue lowering their prices to make them more attractive to real-world car shoppers. And having more Nissan Leafs and Chevy Volts on the road is likely to help Tesla.

Chevrolet’s recent $5,000 price cut on its Volt plug-in hybrid could indicate a lack of enthusiasm for electric cars. But it could also be seen as a sign that such vehicles have finally arrived in the consumer mainstream.

While the Model S’s unique looks, technology and performance will continue to attract early adopters and well-to-do technophiles, what draws most new-car buyers is seeing the latest model in a neighbor’s garage or in a local parking lot.

Tesla’s main goal is to get “more electric cars on the road,” Musk said, so they will seem like transportation instead of novelties.

If rivals step up and raise the level of competition, Musk may get his wish.

Tesla Motors continues to buck the odds, celebrating a major victory in the North Carolina Senate this week. The North Carolina Automobile Dealers — concerned about competition — set its sights on the green car company last month when it endorsed a bill that would’ve significantly curtailed Tesla’s ability to sell vehicles in the state. The legislation, supported by the Senate’s Commerce Committee, targeted direct-to-consumer sales which eliminate the need for dealerships. But Elon Musk and friends proved that it wouldn’t be quite so easy to squeeze them out of NCAD’s territory — Tesla took both North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory and House Speaker Thom Tillis on test drives to show off the car’s capabilities. Musk’s strategy seems to have paid off, as the North Carolina House of Representatives struck down the bill on Tuesday. With another victory under its belt, Tesla’s upward momentum shows few signs of slowing down anytime soon.

The much-hyped Tesla Model X was revealed last night at Tesla’s Los Angeles design center. The all-electric crossover utility vehicle will be built on the same platform as the automaker’s Model S sedan. Few new details emerged from the unveiling, but now EV fans have a glimpse of the Model X design.

The Model X reportedly zips from 0 to 60 miles per hour in approximately 4.4 seconds—and is projected to carry a price tag roughly in the same neighborhood as the automaker’s Model S sedan. That means the base-level price is somewhere in the range of $55,000 to $75,000. According to Elon Musk, Tesla chief executive officer, the Tesla Model X will top out at a price that’s close to $100,000, and will be offered in an all-wheel-drive version.

The unique features of the Model X include its falcon doors, and its ability to transport seven individuals in relative comfort. The Model X offers two trunks, with one underneath the bonnet and the other located under the vehicle’s rear hatch.

The “falcon” doors allows the Model X to park in the tightest of spaces.

Like the Model S, Tesla’s electric crossover will be fitted with a selection of battery packs, either with 60 kWh or 85 kWh of energy storage. Range is expected at between 210 to 270 miles, depending on battery size—lower than the Tesla Model S due to the crossover’s additional weight.

The interior of the Model X will closely resemble the Model S.

The Model X will enter the production cycle in late 2013 with full production set for 2014. Tesla starts taking online reservations for Model X today.

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